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LoH
try this one
http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/5star.html

Jihadin wrote:LoH
try this one
http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/5star.html

That... agrees completely with the Wikipedia.

Jihadin, General of the Army is a different rank from General of the Armies.

It even says who held it in the first sentence of your link:

The grade of General of the Armies of the United States is associated with two officers in our history, George Washington and John J. Pershing, although only General Pershing actually held it.

The position General of the Army was invented because the position General of the Armies couldn't be bestowed to anyone until an act of Congress in 1919 (though Washington effective held the rank for practical purposes if not formal).

Good Copy

edit
was caught up thinking about taxes from another thread

When allied armies reached the Rhine, the first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it) and Gen. Patton (who had himself photographed in the act).

German Me-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City but it wasn't worth the effort.

The Russians destroyed over 500 German aircraft by ramming them in midair (they also sometimes cleared minefields by marching over them). "It takes a brave man not to be a hero in the Red Army". - Joseph Stalin

The MISS ME was an unarmed Piper Cub. While spotting for US artillery her pilot saw a similar German plane doing the same thing. He dove on the German plane and he and his co-pilot fired their pistols damaging the German plane enough that it had to make a forced landing. Whereupon they landed and took the Germans prisoner. It is unknown where they put them since the MISS ME only had two seats.

The only nation that Germany declared war on was the USA.

Amongst the methods of transport used by the 2nd Polish Corps fighting the battle of Monte Cassino was a brown bear called Wojtek who helped to move boxes of ammunition.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of any of these, but they make about as much sense as the rest of WWII

link

Some historians have pointed out the Luftwaffe could have managed to win the Battle of Britain, even after Hitler's interference if they'd developed one crucial but simple technology the rest of the world already had: under wing fuel tanks.

German ME-109 fighter aircraft, did not have the the range to fully escort German bombers from Germany or France into British air and back. This left German bombers unprotected while running sorties.

Additionally, the German Luftwaffe became so obsessed with dive bombing that even the HE-177 was required to be able to dive! The additional structural reinforcement not only failed to make this possible (the plane tore itself apart) but it overloaded the engines, decreasing range and payload.

The pre-mature death of Walther Weaver in 1936 saw the Luftwaffe never develop a strategic bombing force, and Hitler lacked enthusiasm for the development of a naval air wing.

The spitfire was originally a sea racing plane pre war

-Last cavalry charge was conducted by the 1st Warsaw Cavalry Brigade who successfully charged through German lines on March 1, 1945 (Polish Cav)
-2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers. {58,148}

The US Army was one of the first government institutions to desegregate. Though Truman officially ordered desegregation by an Executive Order in 1948, the US Army functionally desegregated by the end of the Korean War, when combat loses among whites mounted to the point that blacks were brought in as replacements.

-The last time US soldiers rode into battle on horseback was in 2001! http://www.indepthinfo.com/afghanistan/horse-soldiers.htm

Alright...this is a copy and paste but.......

Developed by America in the wake of Pearl Harbor, this seemingly ridiculous idea proposed that hundreds of bats should be captured, and a tiny incendiary bomb be attached to the body of each. These bats would be placed in a bat carrier which would subsequently be dropped from a bomber. A parachute would deploy at 1000 feet to slow its descent, and the trays inside the carrier would separate out to allow some 1040 bats inside to escape. Once free of the carrier, the bats would disperse and roost throughout the buildings of the Japanese city beneath. Shortly afterwards, the timer-delayed bombs would detonate, sparking raging fires throughout the mainly wood and paper buildings. During one test drop, a group of bats roosted inside several of the testing facilities’ warehouses and buildings, burning them to the ground. Luckily for thousands of bats, the program was cancelled in 1944, due to the development of the atomic bomb.

and

This was yet another attempt to use an animal to deliver explosives to an enemy target. It was first proposed by American psychologist B.F.Skinner, as a way to delivering a missile accurately against a target, by placing a pigeon inside the missile. An image of the target would be projected in front of it, and the pigeon would be trained to recognize it. It would then peck on one of four levers (up, down, left or right) until the target was dead centre of the screen. They were encouraged to do so by their training, where they were awarded with corn for keeping the target in the centre. They were surprising adept at this, (in training) being able to track a target which jumped 4 or 5 inches a second on the screen. The National Defense Research Committee committed $25,000 to this research, and the army modified several missiles for this purpose before it was decided that electronic guidance would be superior, and the project was scrapped.

from
http://listverse.com/2010/10/08/top-10-bizarre-weapons-of-world-war-ii/

LordofHats wrote:

The guy who created the suspension system of the T-34 first proposed it to the British army. They laughed at him.

Doubt that, seeing as the Christie Suspension was used in the British Cruiser III, which was designed in 1936-37 by Christie was adopted almost wholesale by the British in 1938.

The T-34 was designed 1938-1939. The BT-2 was the first Christie tank, and is essentially a retooling of Christie's first design from 1928.

I believe you've confused it with the US government, which rejected the Christie suspension of the belief that it was only a marginal improvement over the leaf spring suspension system, and refused to buy the designs, and then found out that Christie's suspension when used in light tanks was vastly superior some years later when Christie had already made prominent contracts with the USSR and the UK and didn't want to sell to the US.

Fortunately though the US eventually began using the Vertical volute spring suspension, which functioned much better than the Christie suspension in heavier vehicles, was more mechanically reliable, and needed less upkeep work.

The More You Know!

Damn, right you are.

A couple more spartan ones.

The Hippias at thermopylae was indeed supported by some 2-3000 troops from the other city states but it also brought some 5000 Helot light infantry of their own.

During unarmed sparring it was not uncommon for spartan soldiers to wrestle with the goal of sodomizing the opponent.

An interesting Napoleonic one.

Napoleon's troops were re-issued Coats with tin Buttons before their foray into russia. During this Disatrous campaign it was found they disentegrated in the extreme cold. It left the men having to scavenge for new ones or hold their coats closed with other less reliable methods. Had they been made of another allotrope of Tin it would have never happened.

Grakmar wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:John J. Pershing is the only American person to have held the rank of General of the Armies while still breathing.

I believe Grant was as well.

Grant (along with Sherman, Philip Sheridan, Marshall, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Arnold, and Bradley) all recieved the rank of "General of the Army" (basically a 5-star general).

However, "General of the Armies" (plural) is an even higher rank. The only people to get that are John J. Pershing and George Washington. Although, Washington had been dead almost 200 years before he received it.

No one expects Zombie Washington!

Well, lets be honest. One man expects Zombie Washington:



Cause Burt Gummer is prepared. For everything.

My hero! he's dreamie....

Niels Bohr again:
Bohr, along with fellow Nobel laureate James Franck, left Denmark in a hurry, leaving behind the solid gold medal bestowed for his prize. Aware that the invading Germans were confiscating precious metals, fellow physicist George de Hevesy dropped theirs into a jar of aqua regia (nitro-hydrochloric acid), dissolving them into a dirty brown slush, which he simply sealed and placed unmarked on a shelf. At the end of the war, he simply precipitated the gold back out of the acid, allowing the Nobel prize committee to restrike the medals and return them to their recipients.

(Not strictly military, I know, but World War Two-themed, and amusing.)

That's why they gave them the Nobel prize in the first place i guess...
For being clever dicks...

Indeed.

-The Sherman tank is commonly considered to be markedly inferior to German tanks of WWII. While this is debatable, it is interesting to note that in the Pacific, the Sherman enjoyed such a dominating presence over lightly armored poorly gunned Japanese tanks, that the Japanese resorted to charging Shermans with bombs at the end of long stick to destroy them .

-Japan never developed adequate anti-armor weapons, believing that the use of armor in the pacific would be extremely limited by the weight of the vehicles and the difficulty of landing them. The US considered this problem and laughed.

The Japanese spent loads of money during WWII developing a microwave death ray, dismissing the Atomic Bomb as "unfeasible".

Some survivors of Hiroshima had enough time to get to Nagasaki...

Well the Sherman was arguably more than a match to anything up to the PZIV - which came out at roughly the same time. The German kept developing and the US generally just upgraded the Sherman. While not its equal a Sherman Firefly or 75 long gun equipped Sherman jumbo is not totally outmatched by Panthers.

Had it continued there would have been a lot of Pershings (think early version M-48 Patton) and of course glorious British Centurions running around which would have been better as they didn't break down nearly as much as overengineered Aryan Uber Tanks.

Frazzled wrote:Well the Sherman was arguably more than a match to anything up to the PZIV - which came out at roughly the same time. The German kept developing and the US generally just upgraded the Sherman. While not its equal a Sherman Firefly or 75 long gun equipped Sherman jumbo is not totally outmatched by Panthers.

Had it continued there would have been a lot of Pershings (think early version M-48 Patton) and of course glorious British Centurions running around which would have been better as they didn't break down nearly as much as overengineered Aryan Uber Tanks.

The Centurion is a really tanky looking tank...
Apparently an Aussie Mk.3 Centurion had an atomic bomb dropped on top of it and it still worked...
Though the crew would be turned to jelly by the shockwave...

Uthe U.S. Navy "Blue Jackets' Manual" is essentually unchanged since 1940.

The rankings on TV's Star Trek are based on U.S. Navy ranks with officers divided into "Line" and "Staff". (Dr. McCoy was the third highest ranked officer on the Entreprise.)

Ships of Star Fleet also use the U.S.S designation... For some reason. Canon later adopted this as meaning United Space Ship

The U.S.S. Constitution is the oldest commissioned naval vessel in the world, at 215 years of age. It is also the only wooden sail power ship still in service to an armed force.

More Tank Trivia!

Between the years of 1919 and 1937, the United States slowly dismantled its military force and radically cut back on the militaries budget. During this time, the United States only operated 13 out of date tanks. The lack of money for development lead to a unique solution: Rather than building tanks, the Army built tank parts. When the war in Europe began the United States took the parts it had designed and rapidly put them together, developing a series of tanks that ultimately became the M4 Sherman in 1940.

The US Cavalry however had its own solution in the interwar years: Build tanks and call them 'combat cars' to avoid violating budgetary limits on the construction of tanks.

The panzershreck is a reverse engineered bazooka.

LordofHats wrote:Ships of Star Fleet also use the U.S.S designation... For some reason. Canon later adopted this as meaning United Space Ship

The U.S.S. Constitution is the oldest commissioned naval vessel in the world, at 215 years of age. It is also the only wooden sail power ship still in service to an armed force.

HMS Victory says what?

All British Armoured vehicles since the second world war have had a boiling vessel as standard.

This is required for making tea and to a lesser extent meals.

notprop wrote:All British Armoured vehicles since the second world war have had a boiling vessel as standard.

This is required for making tea and to a lesser extent meals.

I believe that's actually in the design mandate issued to anyone designing a British tank...

Don't bother me with details and just get me some tea from a tank!

That may be possible...
There's a guy who refurbishes tanks up the hill somewhere around here...
Has a museum and everything...
I would be worried about attacking it...
Some of them work...